


Orange Sunshine

by feldman



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Extremis is the third heat, Gen, Handcuffed Together, friends don't let friends smoke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-25
Updated: 2013-09-25
Packaged: 2017-12-27 15:04:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/980322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pepper & Bruce: friends-in-law, Bobbsey Twins, and the big guns you'd rather keep in the holster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orange Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thassalia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thassalia/gifts).



> Title refers to an old SNL skit wherein President Carter talks someone down from a bad trip. Written from a challenge by Thassalia "handcuffed together; any fandom".

Her voice winds out like kite string, thready but with a promise of rope burn. "I tried kickboxing once, not the cardio kind, but the kind where you wrap up your knuckles, and wear gloves, and whale on a heavy bag to deafening music. That was as close as I'd come to striking out in anger since grade school."

Her knuckles flutter against his, a gesture thwarted less by the metal cuffs tangling their hands than the diffidence they've hastily crafted in this tiny space. They abide, awaiting rescue, but they are neither of them princesses. They are sleeping dragons, each of them reluctant to unleash hell. He lets her talk, figures anyone who can talk down Tony Stark probably has the equilibrium of a gyroscope if he simply keeps out of her way and lets her parse her own stress.

"This was years ago." Pepper huffs, halfway to a chuckle, ribs shifting against his back through two layers of sweat soaked cloth.

Thoughts flit, multiply, and swerve like birds gathering mid-air into a flock. She is feverish. He is annoyed. She could roar into ash and the biggest dent dent she would make on him would be the last echo of her voice in his ears and the consummation of the heat his skin already wants to crawl away from. Things would escalate quickly from there, as the flash of heat would melt and fuse the sensitive equipment hemming them in, to unknown effect. While the other guy could easily take the punishment, he was already itchy like an overtired toddler and would certainly pay it back out tenfold.

The Tower could be evacuated in minutes like a boiling anthill, but whoever had staged the attack had also wired some ominous stuff right into the HVAC and electrical, before rounding up the two of them and installing them here, like a tritium trigger.

Bruce brings his focus back to the breath, deliberate, letting his own ribs push back at her in a slow wave.

"I'm not a fan of hitting things, turns out. It all seemed kind of pointless. It felt destructive, even if there was no actual destruction except possibly to my hearing. Which I think has been restored by this," she gives her hands a savage twist from the elbow and then stops, deliberate, "Extremis." She pronounces the name as if it were Latin for 'end of my damn rope'.

"Well, silver lining?"

"That modicum of hearing loss made sharing a sound system with Tony bearable."

"Huh. If anything I thought his playlist would be the deal breaker."

He feels the shift as she looks over her shoulder, and that's enough to communicate her incredulity. "He told me about your sense of humor."

He smiles despite himself, that they are refraining from tearing apart this control room and exploding the situation not simply through their own stubborn care, but by discussing one of the more casually volatile people Bruce has ever met. "Did he."

" 'Don't buy the self-effacing deference,' he said." Pepper rests her head back onto his shoulder and he can feel wisps of her hair land against his neck, the cohesive force of water between her sweat and his. " 'He can make a joke like rolling a live grenade across a board table.' "

Bruce breathes, feeling the weight of Pepper's head on his shoulder. "I suspect some of those conversation stoppers weren't exactly jokes."

"Yours either, then. I would feign surprise, but I think we have enough of an understanding that it would come off as snide instead of polite."

"You are a queen regnant, despite being tied up in your tower."

To his surprise the heat flares along his spine and down the backs of his arms, an open oven.

"I'm sorry. That sounded different in my head." He leans his head back, modulating his voice to a soothing exhale close to her ear, "Sometimes I get defensive and I jab. Pepper? How are we doing here?"

"For someone presumably well-versed in emotional regulation techniques," she sighs and presses back, laying her searing temple against his neck, "you actually kinda suck at this."

He returns to his breath, to the service of being her heat sink and talking down someone besides himself for a change. "Harlem would agree with you."


End file.
